External Links and Fickle Google

It recently came to my attention that Google is a little bit fickle when it comes to listing a websites backwards links, and when I was asked why, I found it very difficult to answer why.

There are two ways to measure the backward links to your website; the first is to do a search using Google's "find:" function, i.e. in Google's search form enter "link:www.hostpipe.co.uk" and you will see a list of websites which are currently linking to your website.

The second and more accurate method would be to sign up to Google's Webmaster Tools. After signing up the first things you should do is add the verification code into your website's header so that Google knows you are the legitimate webmaster for your website.

The next step is to submit an XML sitemap of your website, making life a lot easier for search engines in general to index your website's pages.

Then select "Links" and "Pages with external links", you'll then see a list of urls from your website with the number of external pages linking into your site. In HostPipe's case "link:www.hostpipe.co.uk" produced 22 results, whereas Googles Webmaster Tools produced a whopping 1,344 results.

The reason for the difference between the two is quite simple, Google is protecting website owners and designers by not showing a comprehensive list on the basic search. If they published all of your competitors inbound links it would then be quite easy to copy them and increase your rankings...

If only it was that easy!!

This entry was posted on 10 December 2008 at 15:43 and is filed under Search Engine Optimisation SEO. You can leave a response here.

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